ion").

Whether this _genealogy of the primordial cells_ found any followers, we do
not know. None of the hypotheses thus far mentioned are so very far from
having analogies in experience. The idea of a first development of the
higher organisms out of their specific primordial cell, through all kinds
of conditions of larvae up to the finished form, demands of us the
acceptance of monstrous improbabilities--(think, for example, of the first
men, who, originating from a human primordial cell, grow in different
metamorphoses of larvae, first in the water and then on the land, until they
appear as finished men). Moreover, the hypothesis, in claiming that a
heterogenetic generation of one species from another must necessarily
nullify all similarity between the organism of the child and that of the
mother, is so little convincing, and shows--in the necessity of conceiving
the universal type of organisms, the type of kingdoms, of main types, of
classes, of orders, of families, of genera, and of species, as but
individual existences which, in the form of cells and before the existence
of the developed species, partly through many thousands of years, lead a
real empiric and concrete life--such an abstract synthetical construction
of nature, that {60} we are not astonished that the theory of the genealogy
of primordial cells stands almost alone. On the other hand, Wigand's larger
critical work rendered great service in clearing up the problems. It is
true, his judgment appears in many single cases not at all convincing,
since he often enough fights his adversaries with sophisms and deduces from
the views of Darwin and Haeckel conclusions to which they certainly do not
lead. But in the majority of cases, his work is full of real convincing
power, and with the breadth of its philosophical view and with the
sharpness of its definitions, as well as with its abundance of philosophic
and especially botanical teachings and their ingenious application, it is
directly destructive to the use of the selection theory as the principal
key to the solution of the problems. Eduard von Hartmann describes the work
in his publication, "Wahrheit und Irrthum im Darwinismus," ("Truth and
Error in Darwinism"), as a mile-stone which marks the limits where
Darwinism as such passed the summit of its influence in Germany.

* * * * * {61}

CHAPTER III.

PRESENT STATE OF THE DARWINIAN THEORIES.

Sec. 1. _The Theory of Des